Chapter 253: Sanitary Environment Reform

Of course, compared to the comprehensive reforms promoted by the former Prime Minister Primo, the reforms at this time were only small-scale and targeted.

The reforms were proposed by the Spanish Workers' Party, with the goal of improving the working environment for workers in Spanish factories and providing some residential conveniences for them.

As mentioned before, the whole of Europe did not pay much attention to hygiene. Feces and garbage could often be seen on the bustling city streets, let alone in the dark corners of factories.

Workers working in such an environment suffered a double torture, both physically and mentally.

Besides this, the living conditions of some workers were quite terrible; dozens of people were squeezed into a small room, making it difficult to even turn over while sleeping.

This was also a common phenomenon for workers of this era. The industrial process of Europe was, in fact, a history of workers' suffering, which eventually gave birth to organizations like labor unions, specifically for seeking welfare and better living conditions for workers.

The proposal to improve workers' working and living environments was heatedly discussed within the Workers' Party and also attracted the attention of Carlo, the behind-the-scenes controller of the Workers' Party.

Considering everything, it was still very necessary to improve the working and living environments of workers. Only by working in a more hygienic and clean environment could workers have enough mood to invest in their work.

At the same time, only by getting sufficient rest and relaxation could workers have enough energy to work.

To improve the workers' working and living environments, the method was quite simple. The factory working environment could refer to the governance of Madrid's streets; by building public toilets and implementing a certain fine system, the cleanliness and tidiness inside the factories could be ensured.

As long as there were nearby public toilets available, it was believed that most workers would choose to go to the toilet to relieve themselves rather than finding a dark corner inside the factory.

At first, some workers might be fined due to their previous habits, but as time went on, the vast majority of workers would adapt to the existence of public toilets.

At the same time, improving the workers' living environment could also boost their mood and prevent them from developing feelings of dissatisfaction due to institutional changes.

The method to improve the living environment was also very simple, which was to build a large number of wooden houses around the factories.

With the development of African colonies, a large amount of cheap timber was shipped back to the Spanish mainland. Whether it was the Guinea colony or the Congo territory, both possessed a large amount of timber.

Building a wooden house for workers to live in only required very low costs and a very short time, but the effect achieved could be making the entire working class more satisfied with the government.

Improving the working and living environments of workers was also a very good opportunity to win over the hearts of the worker group.

After formulating a detailed plan, Carlo summoned Prime Minister Cánovas, presented the entire detailed plan, and demanded that the government rectify the workers' living and working environments according to the plan.

After receiving Carlo's order, Prime Minister Cánovas attached great importance to it and immediately issued the relevant orders to various departments.

The Spanish government's actions were also very fast. The next day, it issued a relevant announcement, stating that it would begin to rectify the living and working environments of workers in factories starting from that day, and required all factories within Spain to cooperate with the government's actions to rectify the environment within the factories.

Considering that improving the workers' living environment would be a large expenditure, this expenditure would not be borne entirely by the factory owners; the government would also provide a portion of subsidies for factories to purchase raw materials for building houses.

Once this announcement was published, the Spanish government immediately began the relevant reforms and rectifications. The government's attitude was also very clear: this was not a discussion with those factory owners, but a decision already made by the government, and factory owners and capitalists only needed to cooperate.

The Spanish government also had sufficient confidence. Because of the pursuit of state capitalism, several large factories in Spain were in the hands of the royal family and the government.

Privately controlled factories were basically small and medium-sized, and these factory owners had no ability to resist the government's decrees; they could only be forced to obey.

Furthermore, the government and royal factories had already taken the lead in making changes; if these small factories still resisted stubbornly, wouldn't that prove that they were completely standing on the opposite side of the workers?

Under such circumstances, the Spanish government did not even need to take action; the angry worker group was enough to destroy these stubbornly resisting factories.

Facts proved that if the power of workers was used reasonably, its influence on politics was infinite. For some factories that defied the government's decrees, it only required mobilizing workers to strike to make these factory owners obediently cooperate.

After all, after a factory strike, it was the factory owners' interests that suffered. Against the backdrop of Spain's great construction, every day these factories stopped production meant one less day of income for the factory owners.

With an announcement from the Spanish government, the work of improving workers' working and living environments was being carried out in full swing.

Major newspapers also followed up with relevant reports, all praising the new cabinet government and King Carlo for their emphasis on workers and commoners, marveling that this was the government people needed and the king people should love.

Wooden houses were built very quickly; of course, these houses were certainly not as sturdy as houses made of cement and steel.

However, for the current Spain, wooden houses were enough; improving the workers' living environment was the main purpose.

As the first batch of wooden houses was built and put into use, the living environment of Spanish factory workers changed from dozens of people squeezed into one room to ten people per room, and each person's bed was also slightly larger, at least allowing them to turn over at will.

Regarding the new worker dormitories, the Spanish workers were generally quite satisfied. Along with the construction of the new dormitories, the safe water project was also launched simultaneously.

The so-called safe water project was actually providing drinking water to cities, towns, and factories through large tap water companies.

Currently, in large cities like Madrid and Barcelona, there were still tap water companies. But in the factories in the suburbs and more distant villages and towns, there were no tap water companies.

People generally relied on underground water wells for drinking water, and some also took water directly from rivers and drank it immediately after taking it.

When Spain had no industry, the water in the rivers was relatively clean. But no matter how clean it was, there would be bacteria, and Carlo himself did not advocate drinking raw water.

What's more, with the construction of Spanish industry, some rivers had already been polluted long ago.

This was not the era of advocating sustainable development of later generations, and the existing industrial technology was completely unable to achieve low-pollution industry.

It is no exaggeration to say that the industry of this era was high-pollution industry. To make the country's industry strong, one must bear the risk of land and water sources being polluted.

Under such circumstances, ensuring that the drinking water of the public was filtered and disinfected became very important.

When deciding to rectify the workers' living and working environments, Carlo also thought of using tap water to replace the previous drinking methods of the Spanish public, letting formal companies uniformly supply water to the Spanish public.

Of course, wanting to make all the drinking water of the Spanish people tap water was definitely a very long process.

Carlo decided to use Madrid and Barcelona as pilots. These two cities already had small tap water companies, and coupled with the reason of having a larger population, they could fully serve as the first step for Spain to promote tap water.

Of course, the first to fully provide tap water would definitely be the factories in the suburbs of the two cities.

Uniformly building wooden houses for workers was a very good opportunity, which could simultaneously provide them with tap water, replacing the previous method of taking water from wells and rivers.

The industrial department specially issued regulations for this: all factories in the suburbs of Madrid and Barcelona must provide tap water to workers; once it was discovered that the workers' drinking water was river water or underground well water, the factory would be punished.

Considering that the two cities did not have enough tap water plants to supply water to all factories, before the water output of the tap water plants met the demand, factories could use boiled well water to replace tap water to provide to workers.

The safe water project was still very necessary, at least it could reduce the incidence of disease among the Spanish people.

Drinking boiled water and tap water could not completely prevent the Spanish people from getting sick, but drinking river water and well water would definitely cause the Spanish people to suffer from corresponding diseases.

In order to make the Spanish people accept the concept of drinking boiled water and tap water, Carlo also specially had various newspapers publish a large amount of news related to disease transmission, drinking water, and sanitary environments, and achieved very good results.

Workers changed from not really accepting drinking boiled water at the beginning to urging factories to provide boiled water, and also urged the government to build tap water plants as soon as possible to provide tap water to factories.

Because of the pressure from the workers, it was impossible for factory owners not to provide boiled water. Once they refused to provide boiled water to the workers, the workers would label the factory owners as intentionally spreading diseases, and the factory would even have the risk of stopping production because of this.

Under such circumstances, the factory owners dared not refuse to cooperate. Fortunately, providing boiled water was also very simple, and it did not require the factory owners to have any major expenditures.

With the promulgation of two consecutive government decrees, the general manager of the Barcelona industrial base, Baron Angelo Orcajo, immediately became the busiest person in all of Spain.

At the beginning of this year, the third phase of construction of the Barcelona industrial base had already been successfully completed, and the three phases of construction were merged into the Barcelona Industrial Zone.

Baron Angelo Orcajo, as the general manager of the industrial base, naturally became the first district head of the Barcelona Industrial Zone.

As an industrial zone that Spain was vigorously developing, the political status of the Barcelona Industrial Zone was equivalent to a city, and it even had its own district council and district government.

The position of Baron Angelo Orcajo as the district head of this industrial zone was even more important than the mayors of Spanish cities.

Only the mayors of the two major cities, Madrid and Barcelona, could surpass Baron Angelo in status and importance.

From the decline of his family to serving as the district head of the industrial zone, Baron Angelo Orcajo certainly understood who had helped him.

Therefore, after the government promulgated the decree, Baron Angelo Orcajo immediately mobilized all departments of the industrial zone government to supervise all factories in the industrial zone to complete the reforms.

The good news was that because the Barcelona Industrial Zone had not been built for long, the living and working environments of most factory workers were at a qualified level.

Baron Angelo Orcajo only needed to pay extra attention to those small factories to ensure that these small factories conscientiously implemented the government's orders.

Those who could move into the industrial zone were basically factories with some strength. These factories still had the ability to complete the government's reform decrees, and Baron Angelo Orcajo was relatively reassured about this point.

In addition to completing the decrees promulgated by the government, Baron Angelo Orcajo also set up a large number of large trash cans in the industrial zone to collect the garbage produced in the workers' lives and destroy this garbage in a centralized manner.

This point had already been realized on some streets in Madrid. Spain's thermal power plants could also burn this garbage to generate electricity; although the waste gas emitted by burning would pollute the environment, it was better than letting this garbage pile up randomly in the corners of the industrial zone.

The disadvantage was that regularly cleaning these trash cans also required some manpower, which also meant an extra expenditure.

Fortunately, the industrial zone was not short of money, and bearing this expenditure alone was completely fine. According to Spain's tax system, all factories in the industrial zone had to pay taxes to the industrial zone government on time.

The industrial zone government would withhold a portion to serve as the fiscal budget, and the remaining portion would be directly transferred to Spain's finance department.

On this point, the fiscal level of the industrial zone government was equivalent to that of major regional governments. Generally, city taxes had to be handed over to major regional governments, and major regional governments would summarize the taxes of all cities before handing them over to the kingdom government.

Because the fiscal budgets of major regions and city governments came from a portion of the fiscal revenue obtained by the government, this also led to the fact that the fiscal situations of major regions and city governments were completely different.

For large cities like Madrid and Barcelona, or large industrial zones like the Barcelona Industrial Zone, the fiscal budgets were quite sufficient.

But some small cities and regions with smaller populations were not so lucky. If it were not for the cabinet government also allocating a portion of funds to support these regions with less fiscal revenue, I am afraid these regions would not even be able to complete basic construction.

Last year, Spain's total fiscal revenue reached as high as 897. million pesetas, of which nearly 80 million pesetas were distributed to major regional governments to help some regions with smaller populations or poorer economies alleviate fiscal pressure.

It is expected that the funds distributed to major regional governments this year will be even more; after all, the rectification of workers' living environments and working environments both require a large expenditure.

Fortunately, the development of Spain's twin cities and the Barcelona Industrial Zone was quite smooth, otherwise Spain would not be able to afford such a large expenditure.

The current Spain can be said to be fully developing the twin cities and one industrial zone. The development of these two cities and one industrial zone was related to the development situation of the entire Spain.

Only by allowing the two cities and one industrial zone to get sufficient development, and under the situation of the first to get rich leading the later to get rich, could other regions of Spain develop.

If there were no key development goals and the major regions were allowed to develop blindly, all regions of Spain would not be able to develop.

This plan had hope of being realized in the development of the government's major regions. After all, with the cabinet government coordinating in the middle, these regions that got rich first could not hide their wealth; they would help other regions develop as much as possible when they had the ability.

As for other situations, it was hard to say; after all, human nature is always greedy, and not everyone is willing to take out their own funds to help others.

Regarding Spain's existing administrative divisions, Carlo had plans to make adjustments.

Spain only had 506, 00 square kilometers and a population of less than 20 million, yet it possessed 16 major regional-level administrative divisions.

Among these 16 major regional-level administrative divisions, there were only 6 regions with a population of over one million, and the remaining 10 regions had different population scales, and there were even regions with populations of only one or two hundred thousand.

In Carlo's view, such administrative divisions were truly somewhat unnecessary. What was the use of regions with populations of one or two hundred thousand? It was nothing more than adding a set of government systems and a regional council.

Besides being able to have more officials and councilors, there was no other benefit for Spain. These extra officials and councilors would also increase Spain's fiscal burden; what did a region with a population of only one or two hundred thousand need so many officials for?

In Carlo's view, these 16 major regional-level administrative divisions in Spain would eventually be reduced to about 12.

These 12 major regional-level administrative divisions would also include the Madrid region and the Barcelona region.

Yes, Carlo planned to set up Barcelona as a separate region as well, separating it from Catalonia.

There were two reasons for setting up the Barcelona region separately: the first was that Barcelona's population was already approaching 500, 00. It should be known that this only counted the population of the Barcelona urban area.

If the population of the suburbs and the workers in the industrial zone were counted, Barcelona's population would exceed one million, becoming the city with the largest population in Spain.

The population of the Barcelona urban area already exceeded some major regions, which was also one of the reasons why Barcelona was qualified to set up a region.

As for the second reason, it was naturally Carlo's goal to weaken the influence of Catalonia. Barcelona was very important to Catalonia; if Barcelona could be set up as a separate region, the importance of Catalonia would also be weakened, and the Catalans would not have much of a threat.

If the population of the suburbs and the industrial zone were counted, the proportion of Catalans in Barcelona had already dropped to less than half. When Barcelona existed as a major regional-level administrative division, it could radiate the entire Catalonia region just like Madrid radiated the entire Spain, ensuring the stability of the entire Catalonia region.

The future Madrid and Barcelona would become the two most dazzling pearls of Spain. Madrid would be Spain's cultural center, political center, and economic center. Barcelona would be Spain's largest seaport, secondary economic center, and industrial center.

The two cities complemented each other, competed with each other, and helped each other, which could help Spain's industry and economy develop faster.

Some officials that Carlo valued in the future would also go to these two cities to serve, inspect, and exercise their abilities.

Although the requirements for the Prime Minister election in Spain only mandate being a member of the Lower House, the actual election process is not that simple.

Without a brilliant political resume or outstanding work experience, it is impossible to serve as the Prime Minister of Spain.

Although the position of Prime Minister of Spain does not require overly exceptional ability, Yu Kaluo does not want the leader of the Xibanyazheng Prefecture to be an incompetent fellow.

Whenever Yu Kaluo issues a government decree, he needs a clever person capable of cooperating with him to lead the Xibanyazheng Prefecture in fully executing his orders.

In summary, the condition for holding the office of Prime Minister of Spain is that loyalty is greater than ability, but ability is also very important.

In the future, the mayoral positions of the two cities, Madeli and Barcelona, will be very important. Perhaps a significant portion of future Prime Ministers of Spain will have served as mayors in these two cities.

5400-word two-in-one chapter, requesting monthly votes!

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